


the only truth

by NarryMusings



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M, This Town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 00:06:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8180953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NarryMusings/pseuds/NarryMusings
Summary: Sometimes it’s heavy, and powerful, and emotional; memories that take his breath away, and make his heart race with desire. Memories of stolen cookies, and staying up all night because they had so much to say; of growing up too fast because families can be messy, and running away overnight just to get away, and lying on rooftops to be closer to the stars; of first crushes, and puppy love – and real love, and first kisses, and slow dances, and whispered promises, and…last kisses.Other times it’s just the simple things. Easy things; hard things. Things like smiles, and laughter; things like shadows, and similarities in other real people; things like old band t-shirts he’d forgotten that he’d stolen, and boots found in the back of his closet, and a scarf he didn’t even know he’d had; things like his imagination running wild with the scent of a cologne he hasn’t smelled in ages.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, once upon a time I told people that I would write a drabble for Niall's first single. And while I hadn't expected it to happen this quickly, I'm incredibly glad that it has.
> 
> Happy reading!

He thinks about it – about _him_ – all the time. Constantly. And he remembers everything.

Sometimes it’s heavy, and powerful, and emotional; memories that take his breath away, and make his heart race with desire. Memories of stolen cookies, and staying up all night because they had so much to say; of growing up too fast because families can be messy, and running away overnight just to get away, and lying on rooftops to be closer to the stars; of first crushes, and puppy love – and real love, and first kisses, and slow dances, and whispered promises, and…last kisses.

Other times it’s just the simple things. Easy things; hard things. Things like smiles, and laughter; things like shadows, and similarities in other real people; things like old band t-shirts he’d forgotten that he’d stolen, and boots found in the back of his closet, and a scarf he didn’t even know he’d had; things like his imagination running wild with the scent of a cologne he hasn’t smelled in ages.

He thinks about it – about _him_ – all the time, constantly, and he remembers everything even though he tries to move on.

X

The first time Niall sees _him_ again, is more than a year later.

He’s back in town for the summer, taking some well-deserved time off from school like every other university student. So it’s really no surprise, then, that _he_ would be back in town as well, Niall reckons. And yet, here he stands, in the middle of these fairgrounds, butterflies in his stomach alive and fluttering, making him feel sick, because _he’s here_. _He’s_ here too, and there’s something familiar in that – something…proper.

Every year, this old town puts a carnival on. And every year, they would went together. Most of Niall’s memories of this place are with _him_ , and a lot of those memories are from running around here as children, playing on this fairground. It’s where Niall got sick in a bin behind the hot dog stand from eating too much candy floss when he was eight; where _he_ discovered his fear of clowns at the age of 10; where Niall got into his first (and last) fight when he was 12, protecting _him_ from the bully at school who liked to pick on people because they were different. It’s where they had their first kiss, right at the top of the ferris wheel, because he was a cheesy romantic – and Niall loved that about _him_.

Niall still loves that about _him_.

 _He’s_ standing in line at the ferris wheel with his sister. His hair is a bit longer, and curlier, and his skin is a bit darker, tanned by all that sun he must be getting in L.A.. His legs are longer, his shoulders are broader, his arms are thicker, it looks like he’s added a few more tattoos to the collection he’d started more than a year ago, and- He looks good. He looks healthy. He looks happy. He looks really fucking beautiful; looks as wonderfully breathtaking as ever – and, as usual, Niall is enamoured.

He thinks that maybe he should go talk to _him_ , thinks he should at least say ‘hello’ – because exes do that, right? And he could. He could walk across the space between them, could stop using the crowd as a wall to hide himself. He could approach _him_ slowly, and casually, except nothing about the way Niall feels feels casual.

And so he doesn’t. He allows himself a few more minutes, watches _him_ climb into the seat with his sister, watches him laugh and smile and be happy – and then he accepts that maybe this is all he gets to have now, and he leaves.

X

The second time Niall sees _him_ , is on Christmas Eve.

It’s going on midnight, and the pub is packed full of people, which would be more than a bit strange if this was anywhere other than Ireland, probably. His dad is out on the floor, mingling with patrons as he always does and taking orders, Greg’s in the kitchen, and Niall’s in behind the bar mixing drinks. It’s somewhat of a family tradition, keeping The Clover open for business on Christmas Eve and running it together. Niall hasn’t been behind the bar in months, but it feels a lot like coming home in addition to actually, physically coming home. It feels like nothing has changed, and it’s actually really comforting.

The front door opens and a group of people come tumbling in, bringing with them fallen snowflakes, and a cold, winter breeze.

Niall recognizes most of them from around town, being a small town and all that – but there’s one face in particular that stands out to him; the one person that always brings the butterflies in his stomach to life. Dark curls, bright green eyes, sun-kissed skin, broad shoulders and legs-for-days has never meant this much to him before.

 _He_ sees Niall a moment later, and it’s like Niall’s breath curls up into a ball inside his throat. _His_ eyes widen, and _his_ smile broadens, and then _he’s_ coming closer – and Niall kind wants to duck down behind the counter. “Niall,” he breathes. “Hi.”

“Hi, Harry,” Niall says softly.

Harry envelopes him in a hug, then, and the breath Niall had been holding sort of tumbles out of him. And Niall freezes, for just one moment, before he melts into Harry’s embrace and curls his arms around Harry’s back.

“How’ve you been?” Harry asks when he pulls away, one hand gliding down the length of Harry’s arm as he takes a step back.

“Good,” Niall replies. “Busy, but good. You?”

“Good.”

“Hey, H,” an American accent says from somewhere behind Harry. Niall watches a dark-haired bloke curl an arm around Harry’s waist, and his heart drops. “We’re gonna go grab us a table.”

“Okay,” Harry murmurs, smiling gently as the bloke presses a kiss to Harry’s cheek before he, and a couple of Harry’s cousins – who shoot Niall a grin and a wave – take off.

Niall takes a deep breath before asking, “Boyfriend?” He doesn’t really want to know, but he has to – even if the answer is evident.

“Um, yeah- His name is Jeff,” Harry explains.

Niall nods because he doesn’t trust his voice. Although even if he did, he’d never be able to actually ask the millions of questions flying around in his head. _How did you meet? Where did you meet? How long have you been together? Is it serious? How serious is it? Are you living together? How long has he known your parents? Do you ever talk about me..?_

“What about you?” Harry asks, sounding genuinely curious. “Are you seeing anyone, I mean?”

“No,” Niall shrugs. “Not at the moment.” And, well, it’s not for a lack of trying. Because he has tried a few times – to move on, he just… He can’t. And it’s wrong, this much he knows – especially now that he knows that Harry has moved on, it’s just- It’s hard, when everything he does reminds him of Harry, and everything he wants to do is something he wants to do with _Harry_.

“How’s L.A.?” he asks a moment later, if for no other reason than a change of subject. Well, sort of.

Harry smiles. “L.A. is great,” he says. “It’s really great, actually. And it’s so different from- From home, you know? But I love it.”

Niall’s heart swells a bit, hearing how happy Harry sounds. It’s sort of bittersweet, though. “That’s good, Harry.”

“How’s London?”

“Uh- Interesting,” Niall murmurs. “London is a really cool place. I’m enjoying it. I miss home a lot though.”

“Me too,” Harry whispers back.

 _I miss you_ , Niall wants to say.

An older man, Mr. O’Connor, approaches the bar, then, and Niall steps away to serve him a pint of Guinness without the Irishman even having to ask. He gives Niall a pretty decent tip, considering it’s only one drink, and then wanders off back to his table. For as long as Niall’s known him as a regular patron, Mr. O’Connor has come down to the pub every year on Christmas Eve.

Harry hovers on the other side of the side counter awkwardly. “I should, um-“

“Yeah, no, you should go,” Niall says. “I’ll, uh- See you around, I guess.”

“You should come join us later, if you have time.”

“Depends if Bobby decides to give me some time off-“

“What’s this I hear about some time off?” Asks one Bobby Horan, as he comes up behind Harry. He claps both hands on Harry’s shoulders and gives him a light shake. “Long time no see, fella. We miss you around here.”

“I miss you guys too,” Harry says, going in for the hug with Bobby – and Niall has to swallow hard around the lump in his throat, as he tries not to read into it. “Give Niall some time off tonight, yeah? Give us some more time to catch up.”

“Anything for you, lad,” Bobby promises, and Niall sort of hopes he doesn’t get any time off tonight because he doesn’t quite fancy sitting around with Harry _and his boyfriend_.

He’s jealous enough as it is, is the thing.

And it’s hard. It’s hard to watch them together – to watch Jeff put his arms around Harry the way Niall used to, to watch Harry lean into him the way he used to lean into Niall, to watch them get handsier and flirtier with every drink consumed. Somehow, though, it’s even harder not to watch them – especially _here_ , because this place holds just as many memories for him as the fairgrounds do.

They met here at the age of five; Niall had been sitting in at the bar colouring, when a young woman with two children had come in. She’d been looking for Bobby, talked to him about the vacant apartment upstairs, said she’d needed a place to stay because she’d just left her husband and taken her kids with her. They were relatively new to the area, and she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Bobby had let her stay the first month free, as she hadn’t had enough money to cover the rent, in exchange for a little bit of help behind the bar while she looked for other work. Harry was just always…around after that, and Niall was always there because Bobby was always there – and Niall doesn’t really remember _how_ or _when_ they became friends. It’s like one minute they weren’t, and then the next they were inseparable.

And now here’s Harry, with someone else. Niall’s not really sure how to process that, so he doesn’t. Not really.

Nor does he end up joining Harry and his boyfriend, along with their group of people, despite the fact that Bobby tries to force him to. Instead, he just continues to find more work until most of the patrons have left, and then he hides out in the kitchen to help Greg clean up.

It’s when he’s putting a full tray of dirty glasses into the dishwasher under the bar that he sees Harry get up to leave. Harry smiles and waves to him on his way out, and Niall smiles back, forcing himself to ignore the arm wrapped around Harry’s waist.

And then it’s when he’s in bed a couple of hours later, staring up at the ceiling because he can’t slip due to the constant mantra of HarryHarryHarry going on his head, that he gets a text from Harry. Two sentences; eight words:

_It was lovely to see you. Happy Christmas._

Niall types out, and then promptly deletes _‘I miss you’_ three times, before he settles on a simple:

_Likewise, Haz.. Happy Christmas ._

X

Niall meets Barbara in January, and she’s perfect. 

She’s smart, and she’s funny, and she’s really fucking beautiful; all long, dark hair, and blue eyes, and pretty lips, and soft skin, and long legs. (And Niall doesn’t have a type at all, does he?)

She makes him smile, and she makes him laugh, and she stays up until all hours of the night watching the telly with him, and she listens to him gush about space and music and sports. She gets along with his friends, his family loves her, she looks gorgeous with her hair all messy and she looks stunning his t-shirts, which is just a little bit too big for her, and somewhere along the way she leaves a toothbrush in his bathroom and it stays there.

She’s really fucking perfect – except that she’s not, not for Niall, no matter how badly he wants her to be.

Because he could love her. He could fall in love with her. He could really, and truly be with her.

If only he _could_.

If only he could move on.

X

He sees Harry in passing almost every time he goes back home. At the market. At the coffee shop. At the carnival, again. On New Year’s Eve.

And that’s all it is, really. Just old friends – old flames – passing each other by.

The butterflies in his stomach come to life every time he sees Harry.

And every time he sees Harry, everything he wants to say goes unsaid.

X

Gemma gets married in a barn in the summertime, four years later. (That’s approximately one month after Niall and Harry both graduate university, give or take a few days.)

The barn is decorated with white and lilac canopies and balloons hanging high above, and fairy lights all around. The tables are all covered in white table clothes, and lilac runners, with a small bouquet of wild flowers at the center. Outside the barn, and on the other side of a two long, lilac curtains, where the ceremony actually takes place, is a hand-made wooden arch wrapped in more wild flowers and fairy lights.

It’s beautiful, and majestic, and…utterly perfect. But nothing, and nobody, is more beautiful, majestic, or perfect than the bride herself.

Her brother is a close second, though – dressed as a groomsman in an all black suit with a lilac tie and a dark purple rose pinned to his lapel.

Niall loses his own family five minutes into the reception, so he goes it alone, mingling with people he’s known his entire life but hasn’t seen in ages. He’s pleasantly surprised by how easy it is, how familiar it feels here, among all these people. It’s good to be home.

At the same time, however, it’s a bit stifling and overwhelming, which is how he finds himself sitting out behind the barn atop one of them big tractor wheels, beer bottle in hand. This is where Harry finds him shortly after he leaves.

“Hi,” Harry says softly. He holds his beer out for Niall to take, and then hauls himself up onto the wheel beside him.

“Last time you tried to do that you fell off,” Niall remembers fondly.

“Last time I tried to do that you fell off trying to help me.”

“Arse.”

Harry laughs, and then takes a sip of his beer.

“Where’s Jeff?” Niall asks, then, because he thought for sure Harry would have brought him.

Harry shrugs. “We broke up,” he murmurs.

“Oh. Sorry.”

The brunette shrugs again, this time with a shake of his head. His long curls blow around in the gentle breeze. “’s okay. It was a long time coming, actually.”

Niall hums. “Why’s that?”

“I just…wasn’t feeling it, for a while, I guess,” Harry explains, albeit vaguely. “I mean- I tried. I just… I couldn’t be with him, and constantly be thinking about somebody else.”

Niall’s breath gets caught up in his throat, twists into a ball, and just sort of stays there.

“It wasn’t fair to him, you know?”

And, yeah, Niall sure as hell knows what that’s like.

“Are you ever going to really talk to me again, or are you just going keep dancing around this – whatever this is?”

Niall blinks, surprised, because where the bloody hell did that come from? He opens his mouth to ask, but nothing comes out; all he can do is stare at Harry in utter confusion.

Harry takes a deep breath, and then- “Every time I’ve seen you, it’s like… It’s like you’ve got all these thoughts, but you don’t express them. It’s like you want to talk, but you won’t actually talk to me. And I can’t… I can’t figure out why.”

 _Because you terrify me_ , Niall thinks.

“Please, Niall, just- Please just talk to me,” Harry whispers.

And Niall remembers it like it was yesterday. He remembers Harry looking nervous and stressed out, remembers Harry blurting it out ever so quickly that he wouldn’t be following Niall to London because he wanted to go to school in L.A. instead. He remembers being speechless, and heartbroken; remembers his mouth running dry, and a million thoughts going through his mind but not being able to put them into words; remembers watching Harry walk away from him, and feeling too helpless to stop him.

“Or not,” the brunette mutter. He jumps down from the wheel, doesn’t mind the beer that swishes up the neck and over the lip of the beer bottle in his hand. He starts to walk away again, but this time Niall can’t let him.

Niall can’t let him get away again.

“I didn’t understand,” he says softly, but just loud enough to capture Harry’s attention if the way he stops mid-step is anything to go back. Niall, too, jumps down from the wheel, and places his empty bottle up at the top instead, and it’s like now that he’s started, the rest of everything he never got to say starts to pour out of him. “I didn’t understand why you just – ended things. I didn’t get why you didn’t want to come with me to London anymore. I couldn’t figure out why you felt like you had to go to L.A. – to go away from me – to, like, find yourself, or whatever it was you thought you needed to do.

“And that was mostly because I’d never felt that way. I knew who I was, and I knew want I wanted, and I knew who I wanted to be with – because I’d _always_ known, and it had never changed for me. I mean, hell- It still hasn’t changed for me. But it felt… It felt like it had changed for you, or maybe it was never like that and I was just imagining it, and I didn’t know what to say without- Without sounding and feeling selfish.

“If you were going to come to London with me, I wanted you to come because _you_ wanted to, not because I wanted you to. I didn’t want you to feel pressured into being with me if you didn’t want to be.”

Harry’s eyes are shining when he turns around; wet with unshed tears as his gaze meets Niall’s. “I did want to be with you.”

“Then why did you break up with me?”

“Because _I_ didn’t want to feel selfish either,” Harry murmurs. “I didn’t want you to feel tied down to me, especially after I’d changed my mind without even talking to you about it.”

Niall’s brow furrows in confusion. “You thought I’d feel tied down?”

Harry shrugs. “Thought you might grow to resent me.”

Niall finds himself shaking his head in disbelief. “I was so in love with you, Harry,” he breathes. “I would have done anything-“

“That was part of the problem,” Harry admits. “I’d have been thousands of miles away, and you would have done anything without thinking because that’s who you are, but I couldn’t ask you do that-“

“Well maybe it wasn’t up to just you,” Niall snaps. And- Suddenly he’s angry. “Maybe that’s something you should have talked to me about, because that’s what I would have chosen – whether you’d asked me to or not. I would have chosen you, whether you were in London or L.A.. I would have done the long distance thing without a second thought. I would flown across a thousand oceans, and driven millions of highways even if it only meant seeing you for one day every couple of months.”

Harry’s licks his lips as he takes a step forward. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Because you never gave me a chance,” Niall whispers. “You just- You told me about L.A., and then you said that it would be best if we took a break – and then it was just… _too hard_ to talk to you, and then you were with Jeff, and I thought… I thought it was really over.”

“Jeff wasn’t _you_ , Niall.”

Niall’s breath catches in his throat, and he’s suddenly very aware of just how close Harry is; so close he can feel Harry’s breath fan over his face.

“I tried to move on, and I thought he would be good for me because he _wasn’t_ you, but… Everything always came back to _you_.”

 _For me too_ , Niall tries to say – only he doesn’t even get the words out before he’s lunging forward, pressing his lips against Harry’s, where they belong. Harry’s lips are soft, and beautiful, and his mouth tastes like beer, and his hair is soft between Niall’s fingers, and his chest is flat and solid against his own, and Harry’s arms are warm and familiar, wound around him tightly and securely. Kissing Harry is like a dream; it’s like he’s flying and falling at the same time, and he doesn’t even care; it’s like everything is on fire, every nerve ending, every bit of skin connecting them, everything. It’s soft, and it’s tender, but’s also hot and passionate; it’s simultaneously too much, and not nearly enough. And Niall finds himself lost in Harry, like nothing has changed.

“I love you so much,” Harry breathes against Niall’s lips; they’re both panting. “I’m sorry I never told you that.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t fight for you when I should have,” Niall whispers back.

Harry brings his hands up to cup Niall’s face, strokes his thumbs over Niall’s flushed cheeks. “We’re here now, right? We can start over; do it right this time.”

Niall’s never wanted anything more. Until, that is, he hears the beginning cords of a soft love ballad called This Town , muffled through the structure of the barn beside them- “Dance with me,” he whispers. And then he’s tugging Harry along by the sleeve of his white blouse, back around to the front of the barn, in through the lilac curtains, and straight onto the dance floor.

“Niall,” Harry whispers, letting Niall curl one arm around his waist as he takes his hand into the other. “Ni, everyone’s watching.”

“Good,” Niall whispers back.

They dance slowly, swaying softly to the melody of the song, and- Everyone is definitely watching, including other couples dancing. They’re smiling, like they just… _know_.

“Thought you didn’t dance,” Harry murmurs, lips brushing the shell of Niall’s ear, sending a line of goose pimples down Niall’s neck and beneath his collar.

“I’ll always dance with you,” Niall whispers, “even if the whole world was watching.”

And it’s funny, really, how everything has changed but it doesn’t feel like anything changed at all.


End file.
